Courts Find Ex-Workers E-lectronically
Trespass

In a separate cyberspace case in California, two unhappy
research scientsts were slapped with a $425,000 damage
award for libeling their old bosses and employer in a flood
of online messages.

Electronic Trespass

A California state appeals court upheld a lower court
decision that Kourosh Hamidi had committed trespassing by
sending six electronic messages to as many as 35,000 Intel
employees. A Sacremento Superior Court had earlier issued a
permanent injunction against Hamidi.

“Intel owns the e-mail system it provides to its workers
as much as it owns the telephones and manufacturing
equipment it provides,” Justice Fred Morrison wrote in the
Third District Court of Appeal decision. “The injunction
simply requires that Hamidi air his views without using
Intel’s private property.”

Morrison pointed out that Hamidi was still free to send
e-mail or regular mail to Intel workers’ homes.

A Santa Clara, California jury decided in a separate
case that Michelangelo Delfino and Mary Day had libeled
Varian Medical Systems and two executives by posting more
than 14,000 defamatory and often vulgar messages on more
than 100 Internet message boards and their own Web
site.

Delfino, who was fired from Varian in 1998, was ordered
to pay $250,000 in actual damages while Day must pay
$175,000. The two could also be hit with punitive
damages.

The jury also found that the defendants had defamed
Varian Vice President George Zdasiuk and manager Susan
Felch, who were often targets of messages accusing them of
having extramarital affairs, being a danger to children,
videotaping office bathrooms, being chronic liars and
hallucinating.

After the jury began deliberating, the Santa Clara judge
made a finding of fact that Day and Delfino had defamed the
plaintiffs and prohibited them from posting specific
statements.